Speaker: Daniel Santos. PhD candidate in the Department of Economics - Universidad de La Laguna. Title: Of Sons and Daughters: High Hopes, Uneven Disappointment.

Wednesday, October 22, from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. (Google Meet).

Abstract: This paper identifies a causal effect of child gender on maternal disappointment when children do not complete college. Exploiting biological sex variation in a sample of dizygotic sibling pairs born at the same time, I isolate the impact of gender by holding constant parental background, family structure, and birth timing. This strategy addresses concerns related to endogenous fertility decisions, family composition, and birth order effects. I compare maternal expressions of disappointment across same-sex and opposite-sex sibling pairs, controlling for individual-level factors such as academic performance (GPA), substance use, and perceived maternal trust. The findings reveal that daughters in mixed-sex pairs are significantly more likely to be the target of maternal disappointment relative to their brothers. This asymmetry persists after adjusting for observable characteristics and appears to reflect a direct effect of gender rather than differential outcomes or behaviors. The results provide robust evidence of subtle gender bias in parental disappointment, even in families without observable structural disadvantages, underscoring the role of implicit preferences in intra-household resource allocation and emotional investment.

Discussant: Sébastien Fontenay, Marie Skłodowska-Curie researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at the Universidad de Alcalá.